ECONOMY

Obama favors Panama’s FTA

There is strong bipartisan support for the the pending free trade agreement with Panama said trade representative Ron Kirk

STAFF

The House's newly confirmed trade representative, Ron Kirk, indicated that was under consideration in a speech last week, saying "we believe there is strong bipartisan support for the pending free-trade agreement with Panama." Mr. Kirk also mentioned possibly moving forward with other stalled Bush-era pacts with Colombia and South Korea.

That came a few days after Obama aides suggested the president wouldn't seek to reopen the North American Free Trade Agreement to address concerns about labor and environmental protections. Mr. Obama had, as a candidate, pledged to renegotiate the deal. And it followed a decision by the Obama administration not to label China a currency manipulator, though Mr. Obama himself had done just that during the campaign. Critics of China say Beijing keeps the value of the yuan artificially low to give their exporters a leg up in the world economy.

After Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats talked tough on trade during the 2008 campaign, business leaders worried about new protectionism out of Washington. Now, some say they are more encouraged. "If the president could just move the Panama agreement, it would send a signal to the world that we're open for business," Jim Owens, chairman and chief executive of Caterpillar Inc., said in remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations the same day as Mr. Kirk's speech.

But trade skepticism and populist economic sentiments still run high on Capitol Hill. Those sentiments derailed the trade agenda in the final years of the Bush presidency and helped fuel Democratic gains at the polls in the last two elections. Rep. Mike Michaud (D., Maine) issued a statement after Mr. Kirk's speech denouncing the talk of acting on Panama as "absolutely outrageous and a serious mistake."

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